Jean-Pierre "J.P." Garbani, VP, Principal Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals at Forrester, discusses his new report: Transform Infrastructure And Operations For The Future Technology Management Cycle. In Part 2 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, he talks about the changing role of the I&O organization.

Start with Part 1 of the interview.

APM: In the transformation to the Business Technology Era, how does the role of the Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) organization change?

JP: This transformation requires I&O to transition from a provider of technology components to a broker of technology and business services. Thus, the I&O organization must focus on roles that assemble, design, oversee, and evaluate.

APM: Are there services I&O provides today that will no longer be needed?

JP: In terms of user demands to IT, there may be changes to the way user demands are met by technology: end user devices are an example. If we are talking about typical demands about applications and infrastructures, I anticipate that the demands will not change, but the way they are answered does: for example cloud instead of on-premise infrastructures or SaaS instead of in-house application development. But that is transparent for the user.

APM: What new demands will users start to expect from the I&O organization?

JP: Delays in provisioning, configuring and deploying specific infrastructures will no longer be tolerated from the I&O organization. Deployment of applications must be fast and agile to support agility in application development.

APM: What new roles will be needed in the I&O organization?

JP: Today's I&O organizations combine the roles of technology and production experts. As we transition from the typical plan-build-run model to a plan-procure-manage model, the new roles require different skills: While doers are part of the external service provider organization, the added value to the service broker role of I&O will be to assemble complex solutions, which may require a "collage" of service providers. Planners, designers, system engineers, and vendor/service managers become the lynchpin of technology management in the enterprise.

APM: How do you advise today's I&O organizations to prepare for the BT era?

JP: Today's I&O is mostly a siloed and hands-on organization. As it progressively shifts toward a service-oriented organization, it must assume more and more the role of technology expert and service broker on behalf of other organizations such as business units or development groups. This means that I&O must train and acquire new skills that are adapted to these roles.

APM: With these changes in mind, how do you see APM evolving? Will app performance remain a key consideration?

JP: A well-executed strategy will ensure that customers are continually engaged with your firm and employee productivity is optimized via mobile apps. Thus, I&O professionals must be able to proactively measure and guarantee mobile app performance.

As systems of records are involved in the systems of engagement performance, APM will also be relevant for traditional services.

ABOUT J.P. Garbani

As Forrester's VP, Principal Analyst, Garbani serves Infrastructure & Operation Professionals in predicting and quantifying IT disruptions. His expertise is in the IT management software and IT operations market, and his research examines the shifting industry dynamics caused by economic pressures and the impact of new technologies such as virtualization on the IT organization. Garbani has several decades of experience as an IT technology designer and marketer and also as a client of IT technology. He has broad experience in designing advanced technology solutions in industrial and commercial applications and bringing them to market.

Garbani came to Forrester through the acquisition of Giga Information Group, where he was the research director of the computing infrastructure group. He started his IT career in early 1968 as a software engineer working on the automation of nuclear power plants in France. He then joined Bull General Electric in Paris (subsequently Honeywell Bull), where he was a designer and project leader of very large network infrastructures in France, Scandinavia, and the US. Garbani moved to the US in 1984 and filled several engineering and marketing positions with Bull Information Systems. In 1994, Garbani created Epitome Technology Corporation, a middleware software company focused on manufacturing execution systems. Prior to joining Giga, Garbani worked as an IT management consultant for several large financial institutions in the US. He graduated from Ecole Superieure d'Electricite (Supelec) in Paris (MS in computer science).